Milling Lumber (grudgingly) #3: The work begins - buck and stage the logs

With the inventory complete I engaged the services of a local excavator. To keep cost low all he’s doing is cutting the logs from the trees and placing them in a staging area for the miller. All the branches and collateral damage trees will just be left in the woods for me to cut up later. My goal then will simply be to get the stuff on the ground so it will rot. Pretty bad, huh? But you can’t mill branches I’m told – they contain too much residual stress and will warp and twist when milled. We started on Monday.

At the end of day one, we have this. I’ve painted the ends of the logs with white exterior primer to prevent checking.I expect the number of logs to double before we are done!

On Wednesday we continued, pulling some more huge logs (here are 2 of 11) from the woods.

-- Some problems are best solved with an optimistic approach. Optimism shines a light on alternatives that are otherwise not visible.